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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27066013">wound for red wound i burn to smite their wrongs</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf'>seraf</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mechanisms (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Camaraderie, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Friends to Lovers, Gallows Humor, M/M, Missing Scene, Other, Trench Warfare, War, and there was only one bed, but. only one lead sheet instead, i don't know how to tag this it's just. an exploration of their time in the moon war, sort of. tunnel moon warfare.</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:00:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,979</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27066013</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>( and there is absolution in my songs. ) </p><p>if the lennies were getting pushed out of their trench, sometimes they’d cut the piping, so it’d flood you out, or you’d be stuck in three feet of mud when they sent you a nice little goodbye present by way of microwave. tim supposed bertie must have taken a shortcut by route of one of the communication trenches the poor bastards from the seventy-third had been turned to soup in. </p><p>trench soup. three parts muddy water, one part charred corpsemeat, microwaved to a crisp. complain all you like about the moon war, but at least it kept the menu broad.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bertie &amp; The Toy Soldier (The Mechanisms), Bertie/Gunpowder Tim (The Mechanisms), Gunpowder Tim &amp; The Toy Soldier (The Mechanisms), Jonny d'Ville &amp; Gunpowder Tim, Jonny d'Ville &amp; The Toy Soldier, bertie &amp; jonny d'ville</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>81</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">‘ still nothing out there, ‘ bertie says, sounding more cheerful than tim thinks he has any reason to be, sitting on the bench they’ve made out of discarded metal pallets ( they were <em>meant </em>to be decom metal, breaking down organically over a week or so, but like everything else sent out here, it’s shit. only the bolts dissolved away into rust. fucking typical. ) and pulling off one boot, shaking about an inch of fetid water out of it. felt like such a waste, too. only way there was water on the moon at all was the hydroponics system built through years of settlement there, pipes running through the earth that now had trenches slashed across it like knife wounds.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">they burst in so many places. if the lennies were getting pushed out of their trench, sometimes they’d cut the piping, so it’d flood you out, or you’d be stuck in three feet of mud when they sent you a nice little goodbye present by way of microwave. tim supposed bertie must have taken a shortcut by route of one of the communication trenches the poor bastards from the seventy-third had been turned to soup in.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">trench soup. three parts muddy water, one part charred corpsemeat, microwaved to a crisp. complain all you like about the moon war, but at least it kept the menu broad.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ everyone, put your gas masks on, ‘ jonny calls out, grumbling as he cleans his gun, some artifact of an old pistol that seemed better suited to a museum, ‘ bertie’s taking his socks off. ‘ and indeed, bertie had shucked both of his boots aside on the ( dry, at least ) ground next to him and had one leg stuck out, beginning to tug off one sock. soldier promptly and cheerfully tugged on their own mask, beginning to connect it to the broken respirator.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">( they didn’t really know the soldier’s . . . <em>deal. </em>it didn’t respond to anything except to when their commanding officer barked out <em>stand to, soldier, </em>so . . . that’s what they had for it, in terms of a name. jonny doesn’t like it. tim keeps coming around to thinking of him as <em>it, </em>because whether it’s a he or a she or a they, it seems to have the same cheerful ambivalence towards all of them. so, they called it soldier, and it made a decent enough bunkmate. didn’t snore or track in moon lice or complain about taking watch. strange or not, tim could live with that. )</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">bertie sighed as he dropped his wet socks on the floor, making a horrible, murky <em>squelch. </em>‘ not half as bad as your breath, jonny. you can take that off, soldier. ‘ a beat, as it just blinked cheerily at him, still stood attention-straight by the respirator. ‘ take it off, soldier, ‘ he corrects himself, phrasing it less as a question, before returning to the matter of his wet feet. their uniforms were <em>supposed </em>to be waterproof, and they technically were, but they were designed shoddily, and all that waterproofing meant was that if any water got <em>in </em>your uniform, it was there to stay.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">hence why bertie was now stripping out of his pants, dropping them over the leadline they strung out in front of their moonhole. it had been a joke on jonny’s part, but it turns out leaving things on the makeshift laundry line during a microwave hit <em>does </em>actually dry them off. some bright sides.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">tim winced in sympathy as bertie looked around dolefully for something he might be able to use to dry himself off, to no avail. their moonhole was a <em>shithole. </em>a cramped little dugout with barely enough space to spit in, their beds, one lead sheet, and a useless broken respirator taking up space that could be used for anything else.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">bertie sneaks a glance at jonny, still seemingly occupied with his pistol, and edges towards his cot, reaching for one of the blankets resting there. ( jonny has a collection, taken from dead peers and lennies alike. ) without looking up, jonny cocks the pistol and aims it point-blank up at bertie’s head. ‘ put one dirty finger on my bed, bertie, and that’ll be the biggest piece of you they’ll be able to mail home to your family. ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ where’s your spirit of camaraderie? ‘ bertie grumbles, shucking off his jacket, wringing out the wet patches of his shirt, leaving dark puddles on the concrete.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ you can take one of mine, old chap! ‘ the soldier says, voice chipper as ever. bertie looks up at its bunk, still neatly made. he and tim had given up any pretense of that long ago, and jonny, upon his first arrival to their moonhole, had stalked over to his made bunk and crumpled the blankets into a ball strewn over the bed, so it was safe to say he’d never started in the first place. ‘ i find it’s rather alright out here without them, don’t you? one can only pretend to sleep so often before it becomes so dreadfully boring. ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">bertie exchanged a glance with tim. their running theory was that the soldier was a wavehead. spend long enough out here, with shoddy equipment and repeated attacks, and the microwaves did something a little funny to your mind. or it could just be the trauma. but the higher-ups hemmed and hawed about physiological side effects, and it wasn’t <em>their </em>job to be neuroscientists. it was their job to die in the moon-mud. <em>nobly </em>was the preference, <em>for queen and country </em>assumed, but it all evened out in the mud. didn’t matter if you died in a heroic charge or tripped onto one of your own mines while out to take a piss. you were just as dead.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ thanks, sol, ‘ bertie says, peeling one of the blankets off its bed. underneath the top impeccably folded sheet, the second blanket had at least a dozen medals and badges, both lenny and londoner, pinned to it. one was still microwave-warped, and another still had a speck of dried blood on it.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he must have blinked at them for a second too long, because the soldier is piping up again. ‘ i’ve been trying to get that stain off for months now, but it seems awfully determined to defy me! ‘ it sighs, an almost dramatically wistful thing. ‘ but i won’t let it get the better of me. don’t you worry about that, old bean. ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">wordlessly, bertie turns the top of the second sheet down, neatly covering the rows of medals. some things, you were better off just not asking about.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he sits down on the edge of his own cot after drying off his legs and boxers as much as possible, working to carefully dry his feet off. he still has the scars from when his last trench had a wretched moon lice infestation, and he’d had to march back and forth over the front in boots full of the little shits. he supposes he’s just lucky to have avoided moon fever.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">maybe <em>that </em>was why the soldier was the way it was. the fever could do something a little funny to your head. tim had got it for almost a full week, and the memory of how manic he had gotten still haunted the both of them.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ anything from behind the lines? ‘ bertie asks tim, as he heads to drape the blanket out on the leadline, watching tim prod at their transmitter with a scowl.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ what do you think? ‘ tim asks, dropping the receiver-piece with a look of disgust. ‘ nothing. and we’re not due for our front charge for another few days, at least. ‘ every so often, orders came from behind the lines ( sometimes on the moon, far back behind the trenches and chemical shells, but mostly all the way back on earth ) to head over the top. it didn’t take tim too long to figure out that those orders were given regardless of any progress or tactics, on a rotating schedule designed to seem irregular enough if you weren’t paying attention. designed to make it seem like there was some meaning to it.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">over the top was an old expression, anyway. it just meant climbing out of your moonhole and the tunnels around it and into the vast lunar caverns where most of the fighting took place, big enough to be a battlefield. bertie had only seen the lunar surface twice - when they’d touched down for service, and when he’d been picked to escort a few new recruits down to the moonholes.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ so nothing to do but kick back and relax, then? ‘ bertie asks, flopping back across his own cot for emphasis, one bare leg crossing over the other.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ well, i don’t see why we should wait! ‘ the soldier says brightly. ‘ let’s take some initiative! i think it might be jolly good fun to stage an ambush! what do you gents think? ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">dead silence for a moment, quiet enough that bertie thought he could hear the gas shells crumping on the other side of the massive cavern, like tiny metal pops.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">jonny shrugs, checking his gun again. ‘ well, i’m for it. anything sounds better than staying in this shithole with you cheerful fuckers until you break into another moon ballad. ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ i hope that gun backfires in your hand, ‘ tim tells him sincerely, looking at jonny’s shitty old six-shot pistol, ‘ and the prosthetic they replace it with is automated to not let you ever <em>clean your gun </em>again. ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">jonny flips him off at that. bertie supposes that’s to be expected.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ back into the fray, boys! ‘ the soldier says cheerfully, shouldering its laser rifle and clapping one cold hand on bertie’s shoulder, making him jump a little. the soldier had corpse hands, he always thought. bone rigid and always a few degrees colder than the moonhole air. ‘ with any luck, we should be back in time for supper! do save some tea for us, won’t you? ‘ and with that, it was up the moonhole stairs and headed back into the tunnels, whistling cheerfully to itself. bertie wondered how it planned to stage an ambush when it was making so much g-ddamn noise. jonny gives a disgusted look at the soldier’s back, before begrudgingly heading out after it.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">they had come in together, but bertie got the impression they weren’t exactly <em>friends, </em>not like he and tim were. he thinks he saw jonny push the soldier into a deserted lenny trench once, tangling it in the laser-wire the lennies had left the mud of it strewn with, taking their duckboards with them. the soldier had come out a few hours later, laughing about the whole affair. had called it rather bracing. then it had shot jonny square in the chest. he and tim had been on their feet, horrified, but jonny looked more <em>annoyed </em>than anything else. he’d said something about prosthetics, though that hadn’t been the word he’d used, and just . . . walked it off.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">so those were their bunkmates.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">once jonny disappears into the darkness of the tunnels beyond their dimly-lit moonhole, tim comes to sit on the edge of bernie’s cot next to him, close enough that their thighs press comfortably together. ‘ i hope they both get shot, ‘ tim says, sounding almost cheerful in his proclamation.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">bertie holds back a grin. ‘ what, you don’t enjoy their company? and here i was starting to think jonny was starting to replace me in your affections. ‘ tim elbows him in the ribs, snorting and calling him a dick, but in fine form now, bertie continues. ‘ the poor soldier’s going to be heartbroken, you know. i think i saw it making you a friendship bracelet out of laserwire. ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ i’d rather it make me a noose, at this rate, ‘ tim grumbles, kicking a scrap of concrete out the moonhole entrance. ‘ tired of <em>waiting. </em>‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ you and me both, ‘ bertie says, voice sympathetic. the waiting could be the worst part of it. hours upon hours of _</p><p class="p1"><em>waiting</em> in their moonhole or the web of tunnels surrounding it, for their orders to come down the line or for the alarms to go off and to scramble for the lead sheets or the pumps, or worse, for the alarms <em>not </em>to go off and be stuck choking on mustard gas with no warning. he sights, lies back across the cot, not bothering to push tim off the edge. ‘ wake me up when something happens. or don’t. ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">and with that, he’s out. it’s a long walk through the mud he’d just had, and he’s well-practiced at the art of falling asleep even with the dim moonhole lights on, and someone else active in the room. there’s no way of knowing how much time has passed when he wakes up to tim singing, tapping out an idle rhythm on the bench. he doesn’t move, just yet, keeping his eyes shut and just listening. tim’s got a good voice, even when it’s just being used for lousy tunnel-songs.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <em>we are queen george’s army, we are the bastard infantry, </em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>we cannot fight, we cannot shoot, what bloody use are we? </em>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">tim knows he’s awake. he always manages to, somehow. he reaches out one leg the few inches between their bunks, gently kicking bertie in the side. in a friendly way, of course. bertie can’t help but hold back a snicker at that, poking him in return, but sleep makes his aim worse, and tim bats his hand away easily, before returning to his song.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <em>and when we get to his throne we’ll hear the kaiser say, </em>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">and tim’s voice is joined by another, walking back through the door, sweet and high as an angel.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <em>ha ha! my g-d, what a truly dreadful lot, are the bastard infantry. </em>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it’s the soldier, smiling and covered in blood, one hand cradled to its chest. it has a good voice. always has. bertie and tim sit looking at it, frozen at - well, it was a <em>lot </em>of blood. and it looked like half its hand was just gone. bertie noticed with a bit of an ill feeling that there was a chunk of what looked like hair, the scalp still attached, stuck to its previously immaculate uniform. the familiar sandy color of jonny’s hair.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">tim swore under his breath, shifting to stand up. the soldier was still smiling, in that uncanny way it had, shifting its mangled hand away from its chest to reveal it seemingly <em>broken. </em>not like a bone broke, but like - metal or wood broke, messily split right in half, some of the pieces missing.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ i don’t suppose you two chaps could lend me a hand? it won’t take but a moment to put me back together, wot! we’ll be on our merry way in no time at all! ‘</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">‘ i don’t even know where you <em>got </em>this much wood, ‘ tim mutters, looking a little dubiously at the soldier’s broken hand. it was a scarcity on earth, right now, and couldn’t grow on the moon at all. while there were other colonies beginning to start their own forests, they weren’t close enough or well-developed enough to be providers to the masses. machines did most of the work in place of photosynthesis, these days.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">but the soldier seems well supplied enough.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1"><em>who would make a prosthetic out of wood and clockwork?, </em>tim wonders, turning the soldier’s hand over in two of his own, tongue caught between two of his teeth as he tries to fit a tiny screw into a hole that seemed even smaller, as he winds a gear no thicker than his eyelash into place. he has the steadiest hands in the british infantry, sure, but he’s no mechanic. there’s something fascinating about it, though. it’s such a <em>waste. </em>not that he means it in an insulting capacity to the soldier, just - practically speaking. it’s a waste. wood is scarce. good metal is scarce, so much so that they get paid in coffee and extra rations for however many discarded shells they pick back up out of the mud. most prosthetics tim has seen, like bertie’s, are a mix of plastics and second-quality metals, or cloned cells.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ see if you can move this, ‘ he says, nodding at the soldier’s hand, once he <em>thinks </em>he’s done what he can for it. it looks about right, at least. it had had to hike all the way back through the tunnels under their moonhole to the reserve trenches to get a shower, though where it had snagged its new uniform, tim had no idea. maybe it had just repaired the old one. but it looks <em>immaculate, </em>once again, in the way uniforms never do unless they’re on parade back home.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">the soldier cheerfully wiggles its fingers, and tim can hear the faint clicking of the wooden joints against one another. working with it, seeing that the explanation for its corpse-hands was as simple as - a prosthetic? prosthetics? was it both of them? <em>should </em>feel more reassuring, but somehow it doesn’t.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">maybe it has something to do with the fact that the second he takes his eyes off the clockwork fixtures he <em>helped fix, </em>the swirling wood he <em>watched </em>the soldier sand down to the rounded shapes of individual fingertips, going to a finer and finer grain until it was as soft as skin - the second he takes his eyes off them, he can’t see the prosthetic anymore. can’t see the joints in the wood, the intricate metal gears. just a human hand, but a little - a little off-center.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it still hasn’t clarified what happened to jonny.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it’s not the first time tim’s had a bunkmate die, of course. there used to be six of them, in their moonhole, before the soldier and jonny were sent to join them. back when they had three lead sheets, one to a pair of men. something that seems like a luxury, now, after enough times trying to cram tim’s long legs and the soldier’s immutable shoulders and jonny’s . . . well, jonny acting like <em>jonny, </em>all under one sheet.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it had been a dirty, desperate tunnel-scramble, and tim and bertie made it out by the skin of their teeth, with bertie’s lead sheet in his bag. their other four bunkmates were - well. on the bright side, they hadn’t had to dig graves for them.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">but jonny had been - different, somehow. tim finds himself realizing, as the soldier holds its hand up to one of the dim lights of their moonhole, that he just - had expected jonny <em>not </em>to die.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ well, that was fucking stupid of me, ‘ he mutters to himself, pulling his goggles down over his eyes. everyone dies, in the end. bertie looks over at him, raising a questioning eyebrow, and tim waves him off, before tipping his head in the soldier’s direction with a raised eyebrow of his own. bertie just gave him a long, tired look, and together, they watched the soldier begin to pull out delicate porcelain cups from <em>g-d </em>knows where, and begin to make tea. real, g-d’s honest tea.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">( tim had asked, once, where the hell it had got it. it had looked at him, surprised, and chastised him, saying that it was just the right and proper thing, to have a good english tea to keep their spirits up in this rotten little hole. and therefore, if it was the <em>proper </em>thing to do, it simply wouldn’t do to <em>not </em>have tea, after all. their medkit had been out of aspirin for two weeks at this point already, so for his own sanity, tim left it at that. )</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ bertie, my dear fellow, i always forget - do you want cream and sugar or not? ‘ it chirps, and bertie rolls his eyes back to tim, rubbing a hand over his mouth, before shrugging.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ just sugar’s fine, sol. ‘ under his breath, more for tim’s benefit than anything else: ‘ though i’m not sure i want to know how many people you had to kill to get your hands on it. ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">tim snorts, tugging out his rag and carefully beginning to dismantle his gun, going through the process of taking it apart and putting it back together again. <em>one </em>of his guns, at least. he had . . . well, he had more than one. the specifics beyond that were <em>his </em>business.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">still, it’s with the same finesse he had used to help the soldier put its hand back together that he cleans off the steel now, fingers careful to not rest on the metal he takes such effort to bring to a shine. it’s hypnotic, the careful movements of his thin fingers, the practiced way the pieces slip into each other. his thumb carefully rubs over a scratch on the metal, tongue catching between his teeth, as it does whenever he’s focused on something hard enough that everything else slips away.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">bertie watches him with a quiet admiration; the way his back curves over his careful work, holding the deadly thing like you might hold the hand of a lover. the intimacy of one finger always resting on the safety, gently making sure it stayed in place. the little furrow of his brow as he works that scratch away. he just looks more natural like this. the trace of his thumb around the barrel, the way he strokes once over the butt of it to check for flaws.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">the way he folds the gun rag when he’s done, and tucks it back into the pocket close to his heart.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it’s simple enough, in tim’s eyes, he knows. your weapons could be your life, out here.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">not one second after the soldier carefully hands tim his little china cup, the alarms start <em>wailing, </em>earthshattering - well, <em>moonshattering</em> - things that shook their little foxhole bad enough that tim almost spills the entire cup over himself. he would, too, if his grip were a little less steady. instead, he just swears under his breath, squinting at the flashing light that now illuminates the foxhole in a sickly, blinding green. from the sound of bertie’s voice, he hadn’t managed to keep as good a hold of things, something tim could see for himself when bertie steps to his station at the pumps, half his cuppa spilled down the front of his uniform.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ any guesses what they’ve brewed for us today? ‘ bertie asks, rolling his sleeves down and pulling his mask on as he gets to the pumps. after a moment of hesitation, he’s stealing one of the blankets off of jonny’s bed and wrapping it around his torso, his neck - a clumsy thing, but it helps cover him up. keeps whatever gas it is from touching his skin, their uniforms as beaten as they are.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ no clue, ‘ tim replies, his own voice muffled by his mask as he gets to work on his own pump. they could deal with this easily enough, though it would be a pain in the ass. even <em>after </em>the attack passed, they’d have to be pumping for an hour or two to make sure the gas had passed out of their moonhole, and the mud outside in the tunnels would be doubly treacherous to walk through, the gas seeping into the dirt and the water, turning every step into a slow burning that could eat through your clothes and then your skin if you weren’t careful about it.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">the door to their moonhole keeps some of it out, at least, and tim’s nose wrinkles in his mask, thinking about bertie’s clothes out on the line, how deeply they’d have to scrub to get the remnants of gas out of his uniform. waterproof, sure. but kind of shit.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">tim’s arms work the pump until his muscles burn, thin trails of purple-blue fog seeping into their room, getting caught up in the air churning through the pumps, doled out to them breath by breath, the work of the pumps almost stealing the breath back out of him with every repetitive motion, the rasp of metal against metal.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">they could be at this for hours. depending on what the kaiser had cooked up, it could linger in the air until your arms turned to jelly at the pumps and you had no choice but to take a deep breath full of poisoned air. but tim trusted bertie, and even if he didn’t <em>trust</em> the soldier, per se, he knew it could work like a draft horse if it needed to. hard to tell with the masks strapped over their faces, into the pumps, but he thinks it might even still look cheerful, the faint sound tim can barely hear over the wailing klaxon of alarms sounding suspiciously like the soldier’s angel-voice humming ‘ gassed last night ‘. a little <em>too </em>apropos, tim thinks grimly.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">still, they’ve got good enough odds that tim would’ve been willing to strike a bet on them.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">which is, of course, when everything goes absolutely to shit.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">the wailing of the warning sirens changes in pitch, in tone. warps back and forth, and the flashing, so bright it pulses <em>behind</em> tim’s eyes every time he blinks, changes in color. from the sickly green that signifies a gas attack to the searing orange that warns against the microwaves.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">and back again.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">the gas still swirls around his ankles as tim curses, to himself at first, and then out loud - ‘ <em>fuck!</em> ‘ his arms, mechanically, without him, still go through the motions, frantically working the pumps for every breath, lungs burning. stupid fucking underfunded equipment. stupid lenny gas. stupid lungs and their need for shit like <em>air. </em></p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he knows by now, as well as bertie does, that - well, they’re the lucky ones. when their alarms go off, they’ve got a solid two or three minutes before the wave attack or the gas really hits them. probably a bit less than that, now. he supposes that’s the question, isn’t it?</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">would they rather be cooked through, dying quickly at the pumps as they continue to work for every breath until their last ones, or would they rather risk wrapping themselves in lead and seeing how long they could hold their breath for? a microwave attack could be anywhere from less than five seconds to almost fifteen minutes straight, and they had no way of telling down <em>here</em> which it would be. just that if they made the <em>wrong </em>call, they wouldn’t ever have to make another choice again.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">up, and down, on the pumps, arms fighting the resistance of the metal warped by time and shitty manufacturing, eyes flicking to the blinking alarm-lights, ears almost starting to drown out the deafening song of the alarms. tim feels one of his callouses tear on his palm as he continues to work the pump, grip too tight around the metal handle, tugging the skin in the wrong way and ultimately tearing it open. he can feel the gas sting in the raw skin, and grits his teeth until he can hear them grinding together. up, and down, and up, and down. his hands slipping on the metal, skin throbbing where his fingers threatened to blister. the smell of his own stale breath inside his mask. the mental clock he has ticking down until he and bertie, presumably, both die.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">a hand on his shoulder.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he’s never felt so relieved to feel something so much like death. the soldier is pushing him back to the cot. it’s mask dangles from its strap around its throat, but it doesn’t appear to be affected by the gas that still puffs into the room like the world’s rudest smoker.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ duck down for a bit, chaps! i’ve got this one handled, ‘ it tells him, voice echoing strangely through the mask, and pushes his shoulder a little harder, other arm twisted at a brutal angle, still working the pump furiously. tim’s hands let go of the handle despite himself, stumbling back to where bertie is already on the floor, tugging him down to wrap him in lead, the hoses that connect their masks to the pumps stretching back towards where the soldier works like umbilical cords.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">they don’t have much time, of course. a minute or two at <em>most. </em>which means that bertie and tim are taking the quickest and easiest approach to wrapping themselves in lead; with tim lying directly on top of him, the sheet wrapped tightly around both of them, the tubes to their masks trailing out of one end. tim’s thought as everything is darkness and the feeling of bertie’s body pressed to his like they’re sardines in a lead can is <em>g-d. we’re about to die, and my last thought is going to be that the shape of this fucking setup is like a tampon. </em></p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it’s hard to hear, with the masks, with the sound of his own heart rushing in his ears, with the suffocating press of the lead sheet wrapped around them. not to mention the klaxon wailing of the alarms still ringing through the moonhole. but all the same, tim and bertie have been best friends for years.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he’s pretty familiar with what bertie saying ‘ we’re fucked ‘ sounds like. even if all he can do is hum in agreement.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">but their breath keeps coming.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he’s not looking forwards to suffocating. to when the microwave comes, and having to rip off the lead sheet and run to the pumps when the soldier inevitably falls over, trying to get some air into his lungs before the gas fills them, or maybe the microwave will still be heating the air in invisible pulses, and the moment they shift the lead even a little, they’ll be crisped.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">but.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">but their breath keeps coming.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">you learn what the microwave attacks feel like, after awhile. it’s something that’s impossible to put into words, for someone who would be on earth. even the soldiers in the tunnels have different words for it. bertie always says the wave makes his ears pop, like he’s descending from on high quickly. for tim, it just makes the hair down his spine, across the back of his neck, all stand on end, like hearing fingernails against glass.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it’s a <em>long </em>one.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">long enough for tim to start to just. . . feel uncomfortable. not in the way of the gas or like he’s beginning to burn to death without realizing it, but just - g-d, it’s <em>hot, </em>sweating like a fucking pig and pressed nose to shins to someone else under a lead sheet. their heads are both croooked at awkward angles for the tubes to reach out of the lead, and he’s starting to get one <em>hell </em>of a crook in the neck.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">if nothing else, they’ll have a hell of a story to tell in whatever life comes after this one.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <em>yeah, you’ll never believe how i died. not killed by the gas, but smothered by how fucking closely my face was mashed into bertie’s chest. death by g-ddamn motorboat. </em>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">but their breath keeps coming.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">and eventually, the hair on the back of tim’s neck settles. the wail of the alarms quiets, doesn’t flip back and forth between the tones used for gas and for a wave crashing, just the gas.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">and eventually, silence. silence deafening enough to make every rattling breath in his chest sound like thunder.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it takes a good few minutes to untangle from out under the lead, rolling back and forth to get out of the sheets stranglehold around them both, resulting in an elbow right to bertie’s gut and the goggles of tim’s mask slamming into the bone under his eye hard enough that he’s <em>this </em>g-ddamn close to losing one.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">bertie’s immediately peeling his jacket off, collapsing back on his bed. even from here, by the dim lights of their moonhole, tim can see the sheen of sweat on his body. can feel it - the echo of it through his own pores, and the places where he’s pretty damn sure bertie left damp patches on the fabric of his uniform with how they sandwiched together.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">g-d, he wishes he were more surprised to see the soldier blinking cheerfully at them.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he’s not going to think about it. there’s cool air on his face as he lets his mask drop to the side of his cot, and they aren’t dead, and he’s not going to think about it. ‘ how - ‘ bertie starts, quizzically, but tim just hits him in the arm. some things, you were better off not knowing. if it meant they were both <em>alive, </em>was <em>how </em>really the important question?</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">for some reason, the soldier was frowning now, crouching beside tim’s bed. he wanted to ask why, but he was still catching his breath, glad for some air that wasn’t stale. still, he watched it, puzzled.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">and watched as it picked up a broken teacup, long hairline fracture running through it, most of the water evaporated in the long microwave attack that had passed.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ dreadfully sorry, ‘ it’s saying to tim, before he gets the chance to say anything. ‘ i’ll make us another in just a tick. ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">tim lets his head fall back against the thin excuse for a pillow he has, listening to the sounds that fill the moonhole. the crumps in the background, far in the distance once again. too far for them to have to worry about. the faint sound of technology as bertie updates command; still alive down here, thanks for asking, respirators <em>still </em>broken so if-you-could-please - as though it would actually result in anything. the toy soldier, humming to itself once again as it fusses with cups. <em>it’s a long way back to terra . . . </em></p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">the only thing missing was jonny cussing at someone. well. he’d be missed. a little, at least. they’d get some shiny new recruit soon enough - the <em>minimum </em>was meant to be five men, and now there were three of them, at this shitty little outset of the northern tunnels. that was business for the morning, however. right now, all tim wanted was to clean over his guns again, and maybe play a round of cards. drink tea, apparently. and then . . .</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">then they could sing something in jonny’s memory. he’d fucking hate that, tim thinks cheerfully, hand already reaching for his gun rag, in the pocket over his heart.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">the toy soldier hums to itself as it pretends to wince at the concertina wire scraping its wooden shins, already having torn through its uniform. such a shame, really. it had been so <em>lovely </em>when first it had donned this one, all vivid colors and crisp edges and shining metal buttons that it kept well-polished, said to be built for the wear and tear of tunnel trekking. but it hangs limply off its shoulders now, torn enough that the red of its painted-on uniform begins to peek through, like holly berries in the greenery. like blood pulled from under skin with a sharp enough point.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it appreciates the contrast, as it steps around another mine - it could probably recover from it, as it had once already, back in that other lovely red-stained war that it had joined jonny for, but it had been told to make sure tim was safe, and he probably wouldn’t bounce back <em>quite </em>so easily. more’s the shame, really. they’re something of a novelty, explosions. so bright and exciting, even if it pretended to be hurt while cobbling itself back together.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">they had been sent out on a scouting mission, it and tim had. privately, it pretended to have some doubts about these orders from the back. they had been passed along just as though their little moonhole still had a full working crew, even though it was just the three of them there now. which meant poor bertie was back there, all alone, rather than having another pair of bunkmates to hold the fort. as it were. the toy soldier pretended to have a little chuckle to itself at that idiom. perhaps this was where it came from! situations like these. though their moonhole was <em>hardly </em>a fort. it’s seen better.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">or pretended to see better, really. its eyes are as glass as they ever were, stationary in its skull, having to crane its head around to look this way and that. frankly, it thinks, it’s for the best tim is asleep right now. it always seems so <em>disturbing </em>to flesh-and-blood people when it simply stops pretending to have a spine, that it can’t just swivel its head around a hundred and eighty degrees to pretend to look behind it.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">oh, right! the scouting mission!</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">well, obviously it was a great big disaster. they’d had no clear orders to follow, and tim had walked the pair of them right into an ambush! not that the soldier <em>wanted </em>that, of course. it would have warned tim, of <em>course</em>. but tim had ordered it to be quiet when they had first stepped into the unclaimed tunnel. so it had stayed quiet, of course! even when it had seen the lennies’ helmet lights flickering down one of the auxilery tunnels. it had even stopped pretending to breathe! it was <em>very good </em>at being quiet.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">tim is slung over one of its shoulders. it can’t really be comfortable for him - its shoulders <em>were </em>made out of wood, after all, and it was proud of the sharpness of its uniform. sometimes, that was literal! it was hard for it to tell, sometimes. it could only pretend to feel things, and the standards for things like <em>sharp </em>or <em>cold </em>or <em>soft </em>could be <em>so </em>different for different people.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">there are nails, it thinks, scrabbling at the back of its uniform, trying to find purchase in its uniform, or maybe trying to scratch at skin underneath, grab ahold of something textured in the way a ribcage or shoulderblades should be. maybe those made decent handholds in typical human anatomy, if you were a person being carried, like tim was now. it had never been carried before, not like this. tossed into wheelbarrows in pieces, yes, but not like <em>this. </em>it only wants to be accomodating!</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">one of its arms cracks back, and then the other, causing stiff little peaks of wood, like bone-stubs of a dewinged angel, to jut out of its back, so tim could hold onto it if it wanted. that was really all it could offer him, for the time being. he hadn’t told it much else, so it was just headed back towards their moonhole.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">well, if he had wanted something more specific, he would have said so! or if he hadn’t wanted to be carried like this! <em>get us out of here. i’m not going to die here. don’t let me die here </em>weren’t very specific orders. but it was following them through as best it could, really!</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">around one of the mud-pits caused by a collapsed tunnel, then. the cave-in had left something of a canyon carved into the earth. really, one didn’t come to the moon wars to see the scenery. even if you <em>could </em>see in the dark - and the soldier could pretend in the dark just as well as it could in the light - there wasn’t much to see. gingerly it steps, heel-to-toe, one after the other, skirting the edge of the hole in the ground, hand holding onto the back of tim’s leg. the one that doesn’t have a burn halfway through it. dash it all. carrying him on this shoulder makes it <em>such </em>a chore to pick around the more even ground of this cave-in.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">oh, dear.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">there’s someone in the mud, cast a bit away from the duckboards. a british infantryman, by the look of what it can make out of his uniform. up to his armpits in it. the toy soldier clicks its tongue against the roof of its mouth, sympathetic as it continues to make its way around the crater, footsteps silent. it wasn’t a fate it envied him! the mud sucked you down. while the toy soldier couldn’t <em>itself </em>drown, it had still felt the mud fill into its joints, coating the little clockworkings that made it up. it had still pretended to flail, legs kicking as it pretended to panic at feeling the mud cover its head. a novel experience, to be sure! but not one it wants to do again.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it thinks it can be back along its merry way in no time, stepping-to cheerfully, almost to the other end of the caved-in tunnel. the walk was steep, but it had been built for war and harsh climates - it thinks, at least! it had been built for <em>something </em>like that. and if it was a soldier, it was jolly well going to be a <em>good </em>one. it doesn’t pay any more mind to the fellow about to drown in the mud. shame, really, but it wasn’t a shame that had any relevance to the toy soldier.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">none, that is, until a flare lit the air for a good, long two seconds, and the man’s frantically tilting eyes darted this way and that, half blind in the sudden light, and latched onto the soldier.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">blast it all. damn and tarnation!</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">the flare is still fading out of the air when another light joins it - the familiar gleam of muzzle-glow, a bright spark gloriously contrasting with the darkness that surrounded them. a lovely thing, really. one could almost forget the corpse starting to float on top of the mud, now, a clean laser-bolt having pierced right through the man’s forehead, still smoking. the toy soldier holsters its gun, and pats tim on the back of the thigh, attempting to be reassuring. ‘ won’t be long now, old chap! we don’t have far to go, and the worst of it is over, now. ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it thought so, anyway. it didn’t even really pretend to have a good sense of direction - it just let its boots march it in any jolly old direction they felt like taking it. but tim had just said <em>get us out of here, </em>and they were out, weren’t they? it frowned, wondering if <em>don’t let me die here </em>had to be applied to the tunnel-ambush they had been stuck in, the cramped and desperate scrabble, or if <em>don’t let me die here </em>meant the <em>moon. </em>all of the moon. well, that’d certainly be a bit of a tall order, but the toy soldier always likes to take on a challenge. pretends to like. you know.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">really, it was for the best that that little disaster had been avoided.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">as the toy soldier marches on, tim slung over its shoulder, it remarks as much to itself, in as much of a mind as it has. it prides itself on being quick, if nothing else. stalwart and true, and all that, wot! it may not have the beating heart of the british infantry, or the vicious, scarlet blood of the rose-reds, but by jove, it certainly made up for that in <em>initiative. </em></p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it had thought quickly enough, at least. it already had a mission, after all, and it couldn’t be talked out of it, or distracted into a new one. that would just be a bother and a half. it was for the best, really, that when the shot had rung through the air, the ghost of the words <em>help me </em>that had just been beginning to form on the man’s lips had died with him.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">splendid effort, old chap, it congratulates itself, as they descend back into the pockmarked flesh of the moon, and the tunnels swallow them both.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">‘ well, i can’t do <em>all </em>the songs by myself, ‘ jonny says, in a moment of uncharacteristic humilty for him, if he does say so himself. one slightly filthy hand singed with gunpowder presses to his heart, blood thick under his fingernails. ‘ i’m good, but i’m not <em>that </em>good. some of those bloody notes . . . i think nastya may have included them just to torment me. i can’t hit something that high, not unless i want to <em>really </em>fuck my vocal cords right up. maybe another time, though. ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">the lunar soldier he had been sharing all of this with really doesn’t have the kind of insightful, constructive criticism jonny was looking for. all he does is continue to keep fucking <em>screaming, </em> hands clutching at the bloody stump where one of his legs was, staring at jonny with eyes gone glazed-over with some combination of horror and panic, watching where the holes in jonny’s chest continued to close over, as though a good few hundred laser bolts through him was no more than a mild inconvenience.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">jonny sighs, long and put-upon, and cocks his gun, putting a bullet right between the lenny’s eyes, leaving him in blessed silence. ‘ everyone’s a critic, ‘ he grumbles, under his breath, kicking his feet up to rest on the still-warm corpse as he fondles his gun.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">it’s good to get some distance from that piece of junk nastya found in a secondhand store. no, he’s not still bitter about it having been seemingly added to their ranks as a <em>replacement </em>for him, whatever ashes might say, but - well, it’s <em>grating </em>to be around! its constant fucking chipper attitude and the way it manages to get back in whenever jonny pushes it out the airlock, and the fact he has no idea what the fuck it <em>is, </em>not really.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he’s been alive a very long time already. not as old as he <em>will </em>be, one day, but long enough that he’s pretty sure he’s seen just about everything. it blends together, sometimes. the same tragedies and loves and deaths and stories. he’s seen a dozen other young men or women or bothneither tricked into shooting their fathers, at this point. maybe he’ll write a song about one of them, at some point. might be healthy. one-eyed jacks is one of our <em>best, </em>he informs the corpse he’s resting his feet on, and it has the good grace not to argue with him. someone has some taste around here, at least. what was his point?</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">right.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">anyway, he’s been alive a very long time already, seen just about everything, blah blah blah, but he <em>still </em>couldn’t quite put words to what the toy soldier was meant to be. other than a nuisance.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ you think enough bullets through the head could do any permanent damage? ‘ he asks the body he’s using to prop his feet up on, faux concern wrinkling his brow as he scratches over his ear with the barrel of his gun. nastya would probably have something scathing to say on the matter. ‘ could make sense, though, ‘ he mutters. his thoughts <em>can </em>be a little scattered sometimes. idly, his hand reaches up to one of the laser-holes through his skull, digging his pinkie finger into one of them and scratching at his gray matter for a moment.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">reconstruction itches like a <em>bitch. </em>no one ever talks about these things when they discuss immortality.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he holsters his pistol after making sure it’s reloaded, nudging bodies out of the way with the steel toes of his boots, rifling through their pockets. old habits die hard, and it’s not like they’re going to be <em>using </em>any of it anymore. disgruntled, he’s peeling off jackets and patting them down, not finding much on most of the men. for a moment, he considers starting some kind of union for the infantrymen of both sides. if only so they had a little bit more of value on them when jonny robbed their corpses. anyone with anything <em>decent </em>would be so much further down the lines, miles away from here.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">‘ bet i know where you’ve got <em>something, </em>‘ he half sings to one of the corpses - the one he’d taken by surprise, slumped over on her bed, bullet hole through her throat. he pushes her <em>off </em>the bed and then flips over the thin mattress, making a noise of triumph when he finds the flask, half-full, underneath, as well as a handful of pseudopaper lunemarks, worn from how long they’d been left there. a secret stash of sorts.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">soldiers could be so <em>predictable, </em>sometimes.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">bertie kept a letter from home and half a foil packet of artificially sweet candy carefully pressed under <em>his </em>mattress. tim has a pistol he took from one of the bodies of their comrades. ( they’re <em>meant </em>to report or recycle the weapons of the dead, but . . . so many things got lost, out there. what was one good laser pistol, really? ) the toy soldier had seemingly caught onto the habit, but in its fashion, the things <em>it </em>did rarely made sense.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">there were a few tunnels connecting to this moonhole. the lennies were so much better networked than those from good old terra firma. better supplied, too. hell of a lot easier if you didn’t have to <em>get </em>your supplies from another damned planet, be it earth or even a longer shipment from the expanding mars colonies. he looks at the neatly folded stack of three lead sheets by their pumps, and for a second, considers taking them back. it would mean he wouldn’t have to spend another microwave attack with his face lodged into tim’s ribs, at least.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">the thought makes him pause for a moment, as he realizes he’s made the assumption he’ll be returning. interesting.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">well, it’s not really like he has much more to do <em>here. </em>he could continue cutting a path through the lennies, but really - to what end? no good stories that way, since nastya and ashes had outvoted him. no more songs about the shit he got up to or watched on his own. there had to be at <em>least </em>one more of them there. wankers. they shot down <em>all </em>his good ideas. he was their captain, for fuck’s sake.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">still.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">returning would mean that technically, he wasn’t the only pair of eyes there. whatever the toy soldier’s counted for, at least. and . . . maybe bertie and tim, their ragged little bunkmates, could turn into a good story yet. granted they didn’t die. or, well. in all likelihood, they <em>would </em>die. it was just a question if it was interesting or not.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">or if nothing else, if it would be <em>funny. </em>christ, jonny can’t stand it when people die in dull ways. they all take it for granted, death, and then <em>waste </em>it on dying of old age. ugh.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he wishes there were someone here he could place bets with, as to who was going to die first - bertie, or tim. there was no question it would <em>happen. </em></p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he’d joined the infantry for a reason, after all, and that was because it was pretty clearly a losing side, having started on a planet not theirs with little to no ground and having to eke out tunnel space for themselves inch by blood-soaked inch, the dust of the moon that they’d toiled for so long to make some semblance of livable soon saturated with filthy water and gas that sunk into the water, making entire swaths of land unusable. most of the british infantry weren’t used to tunnel fighting, or having to see in pitch-black, and so they got cut down like wheat before the harvest, the muzzle flashes illuminating the second of their disorientation, before they were just another body in the muck.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">and not <em>one </em>decent person here that jonny could make bets with. lunemarks were pretty fundamentally worthless anyway, given that twenty years in the future ago he’d heard they went out of circulation very shortly after the war ended. and he doubted either tim or bertie would appreciate trying to put bets on the other person’s demise. their <em>own </em>deaths seemed fine enough, but <em>no, </em>jonny makes a joke <em>once </em>to tim about having dibs on bertie’s thighs after he bites the bolt, and tim looks just about ready to disembowel him.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">maybe tim would end up eating bertie. g-d, that would be funny. he hoped so. people took cannibalism so <em>seriously. </em>jonny just finds the whole thing hilarious.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he heaves a great sigh, pocketing the flask and the lunemarks, half-heartedly turning over the other mattresses to loot what he can, but his heart really isn’t in it. it’s going to be a long bloody walk back to the moonhole where they’d been, and that’s <em>assuming </em>that they weren’t on leave, or hadn’t gained or lost any ground. it could take him a month to find the bastards.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">well, the toy soldier at least tended to spread a general vague confusion wherever <em>it </em>went. once he made it back to their side of no-mans land, he could start feeling out for that, at least. it was somewhere to start. jonny finds himself almost begrudgingly glad it had insisted on enlisting as well. just for now, of course. the thing was unbearable, otherwise, and he was staunch in that opinion.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">nothing much under the rest of the beds, save a furtive holo with a handful of lewd pics on it, and jonny wasn’t really here for <em>that. </em>he tosses it at one of the lennies’ heads, disgruntled that he’d been shot in the head for this. ‘ pricks. keep a little more on you next time, eh? ‘</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">for a moment, he considers doing something grizzly - stringing up all their fingers like morbid christmas decorations on a length of twine, sticking one of their heads on a bayonet and resting it outside the moonhole, but it’s only the indulgent thought of a moment. it’s too bloody <em>dark </em>in the lunar caverns for anyone to see or be shocked by his handiwork. took all the fucking <em>fun </em>out of these things, really.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">he hesitates, seeing that one of the men he’d shot has the bars of a lieutenant pinned to their uniform. bending down, he rips it off, shining it against the cloth of his vest, and shoves it into one of the bags hanging off one of his belts.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">and with that, he turns to begin the long walk back around.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">g-d, he hopes they think he’s dead. it’s always so much fun to shock people who make the mistake of thinking he’s mortal. increases his odds of getting <em>shot, </em>but it’s not like he’s not used to that.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>puts my ww1 hyperfixation in a new hat and turns it into a mechs fixation. i've always been incredibly interested in the culture of the trenches in ww1, and with the moon war so blatantly based on that ( the kaiser, the trench warfare, bertie, the duration of the war, the fact that the 'gassed last night' song is almost verbatim one of the trench songs popular among british soldiers ) i kind of wanted to draw on that idea. it's just going to be a peek at the life in the moon tunnels. might be more than bertie/tim, with jonny and/or the toy soldier later, but kept the tags more conservative for right now.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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